Posts Tagged ‘Web Design’

Designers spend hours perfecting websites, whether their own or their clients'. When you've invested anywhere from a few days to months in a website, the last thing you want is for someone else to steal the design without even giving you proper credit (or compensation). And if you're a template or theme designer, it's an even bigger problem. After all, if your templates are available online for free, a lot of people won't bother paying for them.

So what can you do if you've discovered that one of your designs has been ripped off? What should you do? Read on for a complete guide to steps you can take to protect your intellectual property.

I am not a lawyer, nor do I pretend to be one on TV, so the advice here should not be taken as legal advice. Before taking any of the actions mentioned below, check with a lawyer or other legal expert to see what is allowable in your state or country or to see if additional options are available to you.

Everyday, we go through hundreds of different websites. With Twitter and RSS feeds, we are able to see an excessive amount of sites in just a short time. Most of the websites that we visit are forgettable, they don't leave a lasting impression.

This post is the third article of our new series “Global Web Design“. Throughout this series we’ll be covering various continents, featuring web developers and web designs from different countries of the world and taking a close look at what's happening in the web design scene worldwide. We started with Russian web design and Web Design in Ireland. We continue now with Mexico and next week with Israel. If you would like to prepare an article for this series, please contact us so we can discuss the details.

Land of tequila and mariachi, home of Chichén Itza (one of the new seven wonders of the world), amazing beaches, cheerful people, beautiful women... and last but not least, inspirational and creative Web designs for the entire world. Ours is a great country, with more than 110 million inhabitants, over 30% of which to date are connected to the Web.

Design has always been integral to our culture: the majestic pyramids built by the Aztecs; the numeric symbol "zero" created by the Mayans (who, by the way, were the architects of the great Chichén Itza); the colonial buildings influenced by the Spaniards and French; beautiful paintings by well-known artists such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo; and now today’s great architects and artists, design firms, interactive agencies and software engineers.

To gain greater insight into Web design happening in Mexico today, we interviewed many people in the industry: freelancers, digital marketing managers, creative interactive agency reps and a few bloggers.

I spend a fair amount of time working on web design. After a full day at the office, it’s not uncommon for me to come home and work on my own site, blog or other personal projects. It’s also not uncommon for people to ask me how I “find the time” to do this type of personal work. My response, especially to other Web designers, is this. How can you not find the time to do this type of work?

I was pretty excited when I came up with the idea of examining and showcasing some of the most famous beer and alcohol-related websites from a number of countries around the world. After all, who doesn't like the odd drink now and again? (Well, besides me  I can't stand alcohol in any form.) Surely this would make for an interesting article that would elicit quite a few comments. Well, if that's the result, it wouldn't be for the reasons I suspected when beginning to research this piece.

Instead, I've concluded  due to problems related to typography, accessibility, and usability  that the apparent "beauty" present on many of the websites related to this industry is merely "skin deep". To put it quite bluntly, the designers and developers in the beer and alcohol website industry should be ashamed of themselves for creating such horrendous user experiences. My analysis here will attempt to inspire modern-day designers and developers to avoid imitating the superficial design and development techniques employed by these web professionals.

But I won't just focus on the negative. There are some positive things to be mentioned, and a showcase of some of the nice sites is certainly in order, so that will round out the article (and might even fool a few of the "I'm here for the pictures" visitors).

How would you like to design a beautiful, colorful, stimulating website that is captivating, memorable, and allows you to let your creative juices flow without the need to worry too much about usability and best practices? In today's web design market, it's rare that such a project would present itself  unless you were asked to design a website for children!

Websites designed for children have been largely overlooked in web design articles and design roundups, but there are many beautiful and interesting design elements and layouts presented on children's websites that are worthy of discussion and analysis. There are also a number of best practices that are exclusive to web design for children's sites  practices that should usually not be attempted on a typical website.

This article will showcase a number of popular commercial websites targeted towards children, with an analysis of trends, elements, and techniques used to help keep children interested and stimulated.

Redesigning a website is a big job (needless to say) and should be handled with care. Many of us with a portfolio, blog or other website have probably thought about a redesign or at least know we need one. For many designers, though, that redesign never comes. As big and important as it is, the job can turn into a hugely daunting task that we put straight on the backburner of our to-do list.

Why is doing a simple redesign so daunting? Why is it so difficult to follow through, even when we've decided to do it? How can we work on designing our clients' websites successfully every day and then perpetually neglect our own?

The problem is both a lack of correct planning and a lack of understanding of the root need for the redesign. Once we've identified these elements, we're set for success. In this article, we'll discuss how to plan and execute a redesign, and how to find the perfect timing for it.

Deciding what to do once you've purchased a domain but haven't yet launched the website is always a bit of a conundrum. Leaving up your domain registrar or Web host's generic page seems unprofessional, especially if you're trying to drum up advance press for your new project. At the same time, you don't want to spend too much time on a temporary page when you really should be working on the website itself.

The best thing to do is create a simple "Coming soon" page to notify visitors of what will eventually be there. Good "Coming soon" pages come in two basic varieties: the informational design, which simply tells visitors what will be there after launch; and the page that invites early visitors to sign up for updates or even to request a beta (or alpha) invitation. Below are some great examples of each, followed by some best practices for creating your own "Coming soon" page. You definitely won't see among these the generic "Under construction" page (with the cute construction graphic) that used to litter the Web.

One of the biggest advantages of online media over print is the ability to change, update, and enhance online media at virtually anytime, with virtually no negative side effects. In fact, if a website or web application does not continually offer its users an ever-evolving and growing experience, that site or application would soon become insecure, unusable, and out of date.

Have you beautified your code, validated your markup, and made your XHTML more semantic? Have you implemented basic SEO best practices, spell-checked content, and removed legacy code? Have you ensured JavaScript is unobtrusive, applied the principle of graceful degradation, and minimized the use of Flash? If you've done all those things (and possibly more), what comes next? Are there things you can do to improve your site's overall effectiveness beyond those?

In this article, we will discuss ways that web designers and front-end coders can keep their websites relevant, timely, and accessible long after a site's launch. This guide goes beyond simple text and graphic updates, common "best practices" for CSS and XHTML, or other things you might see in a typical website checklist. We'll expand on many of the basics, and provide some effective tips for website maintenance geared towards front-end designers and coders.

This post is the second article of our new series "Global Web Design". Over the next months we'll be covering various continents, featuring web developers and web designs from different countries of the world and taking a close look of what is happening in the web design scene worldwide. We started last week with Russian web design. We continue now with Ireland (Lee Munroe). If you'd like to prepare an article for this series, please contact us and we'll discuss the details.

Ireland. The land of the leprechauns, green fields and Guinness. But what about the web industry in Ireland? There have been a host of interesting things happening both North and South of Ireland recently. Nicholas Felton talked in Belfast, Ze Frank talked in Dublin, FOWA came to Dublin for the first time and FOWD came to Belfast. Are all these high profile events an indication that there are exciting things happening throughout Ireland?

To give you an insight into some of the interesting stuff happening, I've interviewed several high profile Irish designers involved in the web industry and how they feel Ireland is making an impact on the rest of the world, along with a showcase of some of the more inspiring websites being produced.

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